Tag: Fetal heartbeat bills

• The Yoga Teacher Guides the Women in Camatkarasana In the Season of Fetal Heartbeat Bills

  

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  I wrote this poem in 2019 after the Georgia State Assembly passed a law that would criminalize all abortions after a so-called fetal heartbeat was detected in an ultrasound.

  Camatkarasana, roughly translated as Wild Thing, is a sort of one armed backbend that one of my yoga teacher enjoys guiding us toward.

  She has a unique way of describing what is going on inside the body and how to harness that energy toward achieving greater strength in the pose. It’s a difficult pose to achieve and requires strength, flexibility, and confidence, but once you do achieve the pose, the body becomes flooded with energy.

  My heart is very heavy with sadness for women now that the leaked draft opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade has been published. We ARE wild things, strong and capable of determining what happens to our own bodies. I’m filled with fury that forces in our society want to take this right away from us.

  

  In his book about the Buddhist concept of impermanence, the late Thich Nhat Hanh tells a story about how his mother was pregnant before him but lost that pregnancy. He asks, “Am I that same baby, or am I someone different?”

  In keeping with the Buddhist concept of impermanence, he reasons that he is the same but also different, just like a bulb that blossoms, and then withers, and then blossoms again the following year.

  Thich Nhaht Hanh’s teachings are not so different from the story of a Chicago abortion rights organizer and NGO administrator who told her twin seven-year-old boys that she had had an abortion before being pregnant with them. They interpreted the story in their own way by saying, ”Mommy was pregnant before us and then she made herself unpregnant so that we could be born.”

  The activist’s words resonated with me, as she explained that the abortion she had when she was not ready to have a child made it possible for her to give birth to her twin sons. Is it really anyone else’s business what choices she needed to make? I’m beyond exhausted that we are still having to explain ourselves to men and to justify the decisions we make for our own physical and mental wellbeing.

  My heart is heavy that I live in a society that does not value women in equal measure as it does men. I’m a poet, not an activist, and my nervous system is not prepared right now to take to the streets. But I will support everyone who does!

  May 15, 2022

  abortion, art, equality, Fetal heartbeat bills, justice, poetry, women’s rights, yoga

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• The Yoga Teacher Leads the Women in Camatkarasana In the Time of Fetal Heartbeat Bills

  The Yoga Teacher Leads the Women in Camatkarasana In the Time of Fetal Heartbeat Bills

  Nothing is born and nothing dies, she says.
  Wheels of light keep spinning, circles
  of energy that turn through the spine.
  As you arch the back from root to crown,
  cinch the energy with your rad corsets–
  light your abdomen and lumbar from within.
  Indigo waves pulse at my third eye, in sync
  with Tibetan bowls and gongs sounding
  in the background, a flashpoint of understanding,
  a head rush. Ground your feet, she says,
  shine your heart toward the sky, extend
  one arm to the clouds. You’re wild things,
  wheels of astonishment glittering in the sun

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  This is a poem of resistance in the face of State efforts to curtail women’s rights over their own bodies. I wrote it when this bill was passed in Georgia and elsewhere, and although a judge has placed an injunction on applying this law in Georgia until the case is settled, another case in LA is heading to the Supreme Court. It’s hard to stay focused on each limitation, each attempt to oppress the people, so in this poem, I focus on internal liberation, available to each one of us.

  Camatkarasana photo

  October 4, 2019

  Camatkarasana, Fetal heartbeat bills, Patriarchy, poetry, women’s reproductive rights, yoga

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